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The eureka moment for Scott Donovan came several years ago at a music party on Washington state’s Hood Canal.

“They had some corner kegs with (hard) cider in it from eastern Washington’s orchard area,” he says. “I poured it and I thought it was beautiful, the color of it. And the taste was so smooth, not at all like mass-produced ciders. I wanted to learn how to make it.”

So the longtime homebrewer, musician and internal auditor decided to move home to western New York and not only try his hand at hard cider but grow his own apples as well.

The Rochester Institute of Technology grad moved back to Rochester from the Pacific Northwest, and bought a 37½-acre orchard with a view of Lake Ontario. While continuing an internal auditing career for a medical device company, he started growing apples and making cider.

Donovan Orchards in Barker, Niagara County, produces nearly 750,000 pounds of conventional and certified organic apples each year, the lion’s share of which end up in retail food stores such as Wegmans, Tops and Costco. A small portion is set aside for cider, which Donovan sells at the orchard through his new farm cidery and tasting room, BlackBird Cider Works. He also will be taking part with other hard cider producers in the Real Beer Expo on June 16 in the South Wedge.

“I did not know what I was getting into when I bought this,” he says with a laugh. “I have never been so busy as I have been the past five years.”

Developing success

Using a range of certified organic, conventionally grown and heirloom apple varieties, Donovan now has six hard ciders in his product line, and others are in the works. A 750-milliliter bottle sells for $12 to $14 in the tasting room, depending on the cider style.

The range in color, dryness, sweetness and carbonation among them is surprising. There is a pale, earthy farm-style cider that is bracingly dry; a still, semi-sweet and oaky barrel-aged cider made from organic apples; a sparkly, rose-colored apple-cherry cider; and an astringent, amber-colored English-style cider made exclusively with Dabinett apples.

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This year, he estimates his total cider production will be about 500 cases. Donovan’s long-term goal is to distribute BlackBird throughout the state and beyond.

Already two of his ciders are medal winners. The Dabinett took a silver at the 2012 Great Lakes International Cider & Perry Competition, and the organic, barrel-aged cider brought home a bronze.

Joe McBane, co-owner of Tap & Mallet on Gregory Street and a key organizer of the upcoming Real Beer Expo, has seen Donovan’s evolution as a cider maker and is a BlackBird fan.

“I love his stuff. He has an organic barrel-aged cider that is fantastic,” he says.

Donovan, 51, says he crafts his ciders to fit competition specs for different cider categories and to taste good. “You want to make a product that stands out.”

Donovan has other cider styles in the works, such as a twice-fermented champagne-style Brut cider. By mid-June, he should be bottling perry, or pear cider, from pears that are also grown in his orchard.

It's all about the apples

While some cider makers buy fruit for their production, Donovan prefers growing his own so he can have better control of the costs. After harvest, apples are put in cold storage and taken out as needed for cider-making.

Just like with grapes for winemaking, certain apples make better cider. Among the older English and American cider apple varieties Donovan grows are Somerset Redstreak, Kingston Black, Tremblett’s Bitter, Northern Spy and Dabinett.

In the same way that chefs are reluctant to share recipes, Donovan’s labels do not specify which apple varieties are used in each cider.

Hard cider apples generally need to have a higher sugar content for fermentation. Once pressed, the juice is fermented long enough for Donovan to reach the amount of residual sugar he wants in each cider. He then racks the fermented juice into steel tanks or oak barrels where it is aged. Some ciders are ready to bottle in a couple weeks; others sit around for six months or longer.

Unlike many fruit growers throughout the state, who experienced devastating losses when early warm weather forced blooms that were then killed by late spring frosts, Donovan’s trees were largely spared. This is, in part, because of the moderating influence of Lake Ontario, which is less than 200 feet from the back border of his orchard. (Wind damage is the more common problem at his location.)

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Cider varieties tend to be late-season apples anyway, which made them less vulnerable to this spring’s damaging hot-and-cold swings and allows for more complex flavors to develop.

Cider's evolution

Though hard cider comprises only a sliver of the overall alcoholic beverage market, the category commands a relatively high profit margin compared with craft beer, according to an article earlier this year in Advertising Age. And unlike beer, which is a male-dominated product, women are the more typical cider drinker.

Finding artisan hard cider in upstate New York is easier than it used to be a decade ago, when practically the only player around was Bellwether Hard Cider on the Cayuga Lake Wine Trail. Now there are several producers dotting the state (see info box), and some wineries have also gotten in on the act.

Hard cider was a happy accident for Don Kilcoyne, co-owner and winemaker at Catherine Valley Winery near Watkins Glen. When a friend showed up with a truckful of apples one fall day a few years ago, Kilcoyne pressed and fermented it and it sold out by Christmas. “I gained a lot of respect for it then,” he says.

Tap & Mallet’s McBane thinks BlackBird is hitting the scene at just the right time, both in terms of the market trend and the season.

“Cider is a beautiful warm weather drink for me, more refreshing than beer,” McBane says.